Paris Fall Seminar

In fall 2015, study in Paris with Skidmore Professor Adrienne Zuerner from the Department
of Foreign Languages and Literature. The fall 2015 Paris Fall Seminar, titled “Race and Class in France: Remembering Forgotten Pasts,” allows students to explore how contemporary France confronts the history and legacies
of slavery, colonization, and other forms of inequality that have shaped the lives
and identities of its citizens. The 2015 Paris Fall Seminar offers a lively, multidisciplinary
approach to France’s rich and complex history and introduces students to the challenges
that communities and individuals face when they lay claim to and make public “shameful”
pasts.

The Program and Seminar Director

The Seminar Director for the fall 2015 program is Adrienne Zuerner, Associate Professor
of French, who teaches early modern literature and culture, including travel narratives
and histories of the French Atlantic slave trade. She is a member of the Department
of Foreign Languages and Literatures and regularly teaches in the Gender Studies Program.

The Paris Fall Seminar program, offered every fall, is a faculty-led program designed
to offer students an opportunity to study in Paris, even if they have little or no
French language skills. The program is hosted by the Skidmore in Paris program, which
has been offered since 1980. The Seminar Director position is filled by a different
Skidmore professor each year, and past directors have come from the departments of
History, Government, Foreign Languages & Literature, and English.

How do countries and individuals remember difficult, traumatic pasts? Study in Paris
in fall term 2015 to explore how contemporary France confronts the history and legacies
of slavery, colonization, and other forms of inequality that have shaped the lives
and identities of its citizens. Guided by Annie Ernaux’s books, students will tour
the city and its suburbs to encounter aspects of Paris rarely experienced by Americans.
Walking visits in Paris will allow students to explore recently inaugurated public
memorials to slavery and its abolition. Students will also travel to Nantes, the Atlantic
seaport city and former slave-trading hub, to visit the monumental Memorial to the
Abolition of Slavery, built on the very site where slave ships departed. The 2015
Paris fall Fall Seminar 2015 offers a lively, multidisciplinary approach to France’s
rich and complex history and introduces students to the challenges that communities
and individuals face when they lay claim to and make public “shameful” pasts. No prior
French is required to participate in the Paris Fall Seminar, but you will acquire
an excellent foundation in the language on the program.

Courses & Credits

Participants enroll in a total of four courses: a French language course, two seminar
courses taught by the Seminar director, and one additional course offered at the Skidmore Center or a partner institution in Paris. There is no French language requirement to apply for the Paris Fall Seminar
− all courses, except the French language course, are taught in English.

The 2015 Paris Fall Seminar program, Race and Class in France: Remembering Forgotten Pasts, is made up of the following courses for a total of 15-16 credits:

Considered a contemporary classic, writer Annie Ernaux is at once revered and reviled.
Although her books are taught in French high schools, a testament to her success with
readers and critics, Ernaux remains a controversial figure among the French literary
establishment for several reasons: she writes about her working class origins, thereby
refusing to silence what French elites consider a “distasteful” subject, and she probes
subjects considered unworthy of Literature: female sexuality as seen by a woman, cancer,
abortion, Alzheimer’s disease, class difference and privilege, and France’s various
“under classes.” In this course, Ernaux’s books serve as a point of departure for
addressing a range of literary and socio-historical questions. The course considers
the hybrid form of Ernaux’s mature writing, what she calls “auto-socio-biography,”
which takes individual lives to be emblematic of larger social identities and groups.
Students also explore the political dimensions of her writing, that is, the critical
eye that grants visibility to marginalized members of French society, including the
poor, the homeless, Muslims, and immigrants, who have not yet fully realized France’s
ambitions of equality for all. Taught in English.

JPFL 363B Remembering the French Slave Trade: From Silence to Memorials (4 credits)

Every country has a past it cherishes and one that it would prefer not to remember.
The United States, for example, celebrates its role in World War II but struggled
for decades to come to terms with the Vietnam War. France is no different: proud of
its Republican ideals—liberté, égalité, and fraternité—and its reputation for progress
and luxury, it has tried to forget its participation in the Atlantic slave trade.
Paradoxically, the transatlantic slave trade flourished in French ports at the very
moment when Enlightenment thinkers elaborated the ideals we associate most closely
with France. Until recently, silence and historical amnesia characterized French responses
to this past: absent in French history books and omitted from school curriculum, France’s
three-century long history as a slave trading nation was largely unacknowledged. But
with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 1998 and continuing into
the new millennium, France has begun to confront its slave past and to reexamine its
national narrative and identity. The recovery of this slave history and France’s various
efforts to memorialize it in the public sphere form the subject of this course. Course
readings, along with site visits in Paris and a trip to Nantes, invite students to
examine: 1) the history of the French slave trade; 2) new scholarship and activism
focused on this past and its consequences, and 3) the impact of these for French citizens,
including members of the African diaspora, who are insisting that their unique histories
and lives become part of French History and Culture. Taught in English.

Choose 1 additional course from offered at the Skidmore Center or a partner institution
available through the Liberal Arts, Language & Business program. Choose from courses
taught in English in art history, business, dance, French & European Studies, English,
American Studies, History, Studio Art. Additional course options available for students
with advanced French language skills.